Leadership, Communication, and Social Influence

A Theory of Resonance, Activation, and Cultivation

Brent D. Ruben, Ralph A. Gigliotti

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781838671211
• eBook ISBN:
  9781838671204
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Can you identify five political leaders whose ideas you don't share but for whom you still have respect? Or multiple media channels and news outlets you tend to disagree with but still listen to? In an age of heightened and polarized ideologies and viewpoints, it is becoming increasingly important to engage in critical self-reflection about the dynamics of social influence in our personal and professional lives, and the responsibility we each bear as agents of social influence in local and global groups, teams, organizations, and communities. 

Ruben and Gigliotti challenge readers to bring a more nuanced understanding of communication and social influence to the decisions they make as aspiring leaders and followers. Throughout the book, the authors explore vexing questions, such as how some leaders in the workplace, community, or national political scene succeed in amassing large amounts of dedicated followers, and yet seemingly fail to exhibit the characteristics and competencies described by most experts in leadership? Or why certain social influence efforts seem to connect immediately and quite automatically with some audiences, while possibilities for influence with other constituencies may only develop over a longer period—or not at all? By exploring the convergence of leadership and communication, Ruben and Gigliotti evaluate the ways in which the perspectives, messages, and behaviors of a sender/leader and receiver/follower can resonate and the impact of this resonance on the responses and reactions of people around them. 

Designed for leadership and communication students, scholars, and practitioners, Leadership, Communication, and Social Influence: A Theory of Resonance, Activation, and Cultivation offers a timely exploration into the evolution of leadership, communication, and social influence, and sheds light on how we can all become more responsible leaders, followers, and citizens.

CHAPTER 1

AN INTRODUCTION TO LEADERSHIP, COMMUNICATION, AND SOCIAL INFLUENCE

As the title indicates, this book explores the connections between leadership and communication – both of which are pervasive and emblematic of our times in their own right, and for a reason. Leadership and communication are both regarded as vitally important across contexts, including, but not limited to, politics, business, sports, health, education, religion, and the military. This book is designed for leadership and communication students, scholars, and practitioners who are interested in how these two fields relate to, intersect with, and build upon one another. Our focus is on the way leadership dynamics are described and understood, and the way those understandings are translated into practice across contexts and at multiple levels, from small, informal work groups to the complex interactions that occur on the national and international stages.

We hope the ideas presented and the practices discussed will help to shed light on what we see as some fundamental challenges confronting those who think seriously about the nature of leadership and leadership practice. How, for example, can some leaders in the workplace, community, or national political scene succeed in amassing a large cadre of dedicated followers and be perceived by many as highly effective, and yet seemingly not possess or model the characteristics and competencies typically associated with successful leadership in most popular, professional, or academic writings on the topic? Why do certain social influence efforts connect with some audiences and not others, and how do we explain why some connections result quite immediately and others require a much longer period of time to develop – or never develop at all? What are the advantages and disadvantages of shorter-term influence efforts compared to those aimed at slowly broadening the base of supportive individuals or groups?

These questions also draw attention to other troublesome dilemmas of contemporary leadership practice. For example, how can we best explain the demonstration of loyalty to leaders and leadership behaviors in some circumstances that would be regarded as wholly unacceptable in other, seemingly comparable settings? How is it that certain actions by leaders – public bullying, the use of controversial and derogatory language, toxic behaviors, or even widespread sexual harassment or abuse – can be tolerated by followers in some circumstances, while these same behaviors result in swift and immediate action even when they occur in other less public and less consequential settings?

It is these questions, along with others, that inspired the development of the framework that will be presented and discussed in the pages ahead. For serious-minded scholars and practitioners of leadership and communication, there is a need for concepts and insights to help us make sense of the realities around us, some of which seem to depart quite radically from what we would hope and expect to see from dedicated and educated leaders and those who follow and support them. We all can think of situations and scenarios in the workplace, community, and national or international scene – whether in politics, sports, religion, commerce, education, or the military – where these vexing questions and contradictions arise. We could easily refer to names and situations that illustrate these points, but we worry that the focus on micro-examples and particular individuals would create a narrower, situation- and time-bound frame than that which this work aspires to provide; however, specific examples will be shared in the pages ahead to help illustrate the connections to the language, concepts, and theoretical principles presented throughout this volume. We would also encourage readers to reflect on individuals and instances in their own spheres of experience that align with the ideas presented herein in order to personalize, operationalize, and make relevant the themes we present.

While discussions of particular instances of misalignment between what theories advise and what we observe, between presumed best practices and disturbing actual practices, between principles of morality that are seemingly ignored in some settings and emerge as preoccupations in others, can be interesting and important, what we intend to offer here is a more general analytic framework – one that transcends particular leaders, situations, and actions – to help explain cross-cutting leadership moments, experiences, and circumstances. We believe that there are ways of thinking about leadership, communication, and social influence – and the intersections among them – that have great potential to advance our understanding and ability to apply this knowledge at multiple levels, and across settings, circumstances, and sectors.

From our perspective, there is no coincidence that the study of leadership and communication share similar popular, professional, and academic histories and profiles. An understanding of each can greatly contribute to the ways in which we think about the fundamental facets of human behavior, particularly those involving attempts for social influence, and in this pursuit, both have been enhanced and also limited by their broad popularity. Our goal in Chapters 1, 2, and 3 is to provide an overview of some of the more critical and cross-cutting dimensions of communication and leadership theory, and in the remaining chapters, we will explore intersections between these two concepts as we advance a theoretical and integrative model of social influence, leadership, and communication that may be of value for personal, professional, and scholarly purposes.

SHIFTS IN CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF COMMUNICATION AND LEADERSHIP

Scholars have cautioned about the potential dangers of romanticizing the role of the leader (Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2003; Meindl, 1995; Meindl, Ehrlich, & Dukerich, 1985). In this volume, we want to extend this caution not only to the impact of an individual leader on group and organizational dynamics, but also to our understanding of leadership communication, to the relationship between leaders and followers, and to the impact of followers on group and organizational dynamics. At the heart of this caution lies a concern about the inappropriateness of applying a linear model, whereby a leader’s behavior could be thought to bring about consequences in followers or organizations in a rather direct, predictable, and causal manner. Rather than simply viewing this caution as an interesting tangential theme, the reliance on a linear model of communication reflects a fundamental inadequacy in many popular and scholarly approaches to the study of leadership and followership dynamics, and in the communicative relationship between these roles.

As with the linear model of leadership, the traditionally popular view of communication effects has also been criticized for its oversimplification of what is more appropriately viewed as a more complex and nuanced process. Within the field of communication, these concerns have led to the introduction and application of other two-step flow models and systemic models (Ruben & Stewart, 2016). This evolution in communication thinking brings attention to and clarifies many important parallels and interdependencies between leadership and communication, many of which have important implications for understanding the dynamics associated with each of these processes and the relationship between the two, particularly as they relate to situations and circumstances involving social influence.

The S->M->C->R = E view of communication – a view of communication where the sender (S) delivers a message (M) through a channel (C) to one or more receivers (R) with a predictable effect (E) – provides an intuitive and easily understood explanation for interpersonal, group, organizational, public, and mass communication efforts. This message-sent, message-received view of communication is quite suitable for making sense of what happens when you provide a dining companion with a salt shaker in response to the request to “please pass the salt.” A linear view of communication seems to quite adequately explain the many transactional exchanges you may have with friends and family members or during meetings with members of a community organization or colleagues in the workplace. In these routine situations, a linear model provides a satisfactory explanation for receiver behaviors that seem to result quite naturally from intentional messaging by a sender. But, when the underlying dynamics of human communication are analyzed, it becomes clear that senders do not unilaterally cause effects in receivers through their messages, and neither do the behaviors, actions, or messages of a leader guarantee an immediate creation of a supportive group of followers. Rather, the communication dynamics between leaders and followers, like those of sender and receiver, are only fully explained through an application of a nuanced view of communication in which the meaning and consequences of messages are understood to be co-created and the joint product of both short-term and long-term learning and interpretive processes by leaders and followers. Leader–follower dynamics are best viewed as a combined outcome of many interdependent factors, including leadership messages and actions; follower receptivity; and the unique conditions of a given context or historical moment that lead to the ignition and activation of anticipated and unanticipated reactions. Moreover, these outcomes may be the result of intentional and unintentional, coordinated and uncoordinated, or planned and unplanned communication.

In the pages ahead, we will explore and apply the topic of resonance, a central concept, we believe, for making sense of the co-creation of meaning between leader(s) and follower(s) in interpersonal, group, organizational, and public contexts. At its most basic level, leadership–followership dynamics are a reflection of the ways in which the perspectives, messages, and behaviors of a sender/leader and receiver/follower resonate (or fail to resonate) and the impact of this resonance on the responses and reactions that are (or are not) activated. In the absence of the anticipated resonance, leaders may treat this as an opportunity to engage in longer-term communication efforts with the goal of broadening the zone of resonance and cultivating new possibilities for activation. In our view, it is through this kind of communication process that leaders and followers jointly create outcomes that so easily could be (and often are) attributed to the actions of a leader (or sender) alone.

Thus, our integrated theory of leadership communication centers on the processes that come into play when leaders engage with followers in a way that successfully or unsuccessfully resonates with and activates certain responses – and it is this interplay of resonance and activation that can help to explain the dynamics of what might otherwise look like linear, leader-directed social influence. Thus, a foundational theme advanced in this book – one with a broad range of implications and ramifications – is that social influence outcomes are ultimately defined through the extent and manner to which the interpretations of followers resonate with leaders and their designed messages, strategies, processes, and structures, making prominent the role of the follower in social influence processes.

Clearly, leaders fulfill a fundamental role in these processes, and their engagement serves as a necessary condition for realizing leadership outcomes, but followers provide the sufficient conditions, as do the environmental, organizational, and cultural elements that form the backdrop of any given communication encounter. Given this perspective, as much as it is important to exercise caution in glamorizing the leader’s role in social influence, we must be equally cautious in avoiding the pejorative connotation that marginalizes or diminishes the role of followers or followership behaviors in shaping leadership outcomes. Followers – whether described as collaborators, colleagues, team or group members, stakeholders, or some other label – play an indispensable and easily undervalued role in shaping the outcomes that occur in interactions with those who are regarded as formal or informal leaders in any setting. Their role in social influence situations is critical, as they are full collaborators – in some sense controlling partners – in the communication processes that underpin leadership–followership dynamics. According to Fiorina and Shepsle (1989), “One cannot have leaders without followers, but going further, one cannot understand leadership without understanding followership” (p. 36, emphasis in the original).

The decision to engage in leadership and/or followership behaviors often reflects the choices made by an individual or group of individuals – choices that often carry significant consequences and merit considerable thought and reflection. In the ongoing dynamics of social communication in team, group, organizational, and civic settings, the behaviors typically associated with leadership and followership rotate and revolve so quickly that the distinctive identities associated with these roles are very difficult to isolate (Keohane, 2010). In many cases, the leader–follower relationship is best characterized as a partnership, a collaboration, or a system – composed of interconnected, interdependent, and mutually causal components. Leadership, followership, and context intersect in a complex, fluid, and often unpredictable manner, all of which makes critical the focus on resonance, activation, and cultivation as they are interjected into social influence situations and circumstances.

Popularity as a Mixed Blessing

Leadership remains one of the more popular current topics, with tens of thousands of books and articles available on the subject, and tens of billions of dollars spent on the education and development of leaders and leadership behaviors across sectors (Association for Talent Development, 2018). It has become increasingly difficult to watch television news, read through accounts of the day, or engage in conversations with colleagues without being reminded of the centrality of issues related to leadership. The subject is an obvious concern in the political sphere, as well as in the contexts of business, local and community affairs, education, religion, sports, and health care.

Interest in leadership is not limited to popular discourse; indeed, the topic is also one of expansive attention in professional programs and associations. Associations dedicated to the study and practice of leadership, such as the International Leadership Association, continue to grow in membership and reach, and the focus on leadership and leadership development is a theme of increasing prevalence in member development programs in professional and scholarly associations across a broad array of disciplines and fields (e.g., National Communication Association (NCA), American Psychological Association (APA), American Council on Education (ACE), American Educational Research Association (AERA), Network for Change and Continuous Innovation in Higher Education (NCCI), and University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA)).

The expansive scholarly and professional literature on the topic also continues to grow. Some of these writings take the form of autobiographical or biographical accounts of leadership experiences and accomplishments, and still other writings enumerate and describe what are thought to be best practices for effective leadership in varying contexts.

This popularity is very much a mixed blessing – on the one hand bringing visibility to and highlighting the significance of the concept, and yet on the other hand, contributing to the confusion caused by an ever-increasing array of concepts, principles, and sources of advice which can be seen as lacking in order, coordination, and organization. The seemingly complicated, tangled, and uncoordinated writing by those in the “leadership industry” (Kellerman, 2012) often resembles the outcroppings of attractive flowers and occasional weeds growing intermittently throughout the popular, professional, and academic landscape, but lacking the coherence and impact that one would associate with a carefully planned and tended garden. This is often mirrored in practice across organizations, where efforts to encourage leadership development are widespread and distributed, yet frequently uncoordinated and vacillating in degrees of rigor, sophistication, assessment, and theoretical grounding.

To a large extent, the popularity of leadership reflects, reinforces, and contributes to the tendency to romanticize the power and influence attributed to leaders in popular and professional thinking and writing. Passive and pejorative connotations associated with “followers” have further contributed to this perspective, all the while marginalizing the significance and potential glamor associated with followership roles and behaviors. Although more continues to be written on followership and the importance of the follower (Carsten, Uhl-Bien, & Huang, 2018; Kellerman, 2008, and others), the relative lack of research and leadership development programming on the relationship between followership and communication, best practices associated with followership, or strategies for becoming an effective follower are evidence of a perceived lack of importance and value generally attributed to the role.

One curious manifestation of this obsession with leadership theory, practice, and education/development is evident in the use of the term leadership across multiple settings, contexts, and roles, without much attention to whether and how leadership practices and consequences are similar or different across these domains, and without regard for characteristics of what may unify potential follower groups and audiences toward leadership efforts. Another illustration of this lack of coherence and consistency within popular and professional discourse is the dual identity of leadership, which is frequently characterized as a source of both problem(s) and solution(s) in teams, groups, organizations, communities, and national and international contexts.

Efforts of a more systematic nature have been the province of the academic community, where scholars from a variety of disciplines are engaged in attempts to define leadership, identify critical leadership competencies, describe associated dynamics, and clarify cross-contextual similarities and differences. These efforts have been substantial and continue to offer great promise, and it is a goal of this volume to provide some scaffolding concepts that will to help advance these important contributions.

The Structure and Goals of This Book

The concepts presented in this volume build upon and integrate existing research on leadership and communication, highlighted in Chapter 2 “An Overview of Foundational Perspectives on Leadership,” and Chapter 3 “An Overview of Foundational Perspectives on Communication.” Neither of these chapters is intended to be comprehensive in their coverage; rather, both are meant to introduce and summarize critical concepts that can help to bridge core elements that unite these two fields. An overview of the proposed framework and the primary concepts underlying this model are detailed in Chapter 4 “An Integrated View of Leadership and Communication: The Dynamics of Resonance, Activation, and Cultivation.” Chapter 5 “The Role of Resonance, Activation, and Cultivation in Leading Change and Transformation” applies the model to the domain of leading change efforts in organizations – one of many relevant contexts for the application and integration of these concepts. The book continues with a summary of connections for individuals interested in social influence in Chapter 6 “Implications and Applications for Those Who Aspire to Influence,” and it concludes with a summary and discussion of key leadership and followership takeaways in Chapter 7 “The Decision to Lead; The Choice to Follow.”

The language of resonance, activation, and cultivation provides an alternative way of describing and explaining common leadership communication processes and outcomes to a wide array of scholars and professionals. It is our hope that the framework offered will help to address and explain leadership–followership dynamics that are discussed in professional and popular discourse, and that it may encourage leadership and communication scholars and professionals to further explore shared topics of interest. Finally, as leadership development efforts continue to grow in popularity, the concepts of resonance, activation, and cultivation can ultimately help leaders to achieve more favorable outcomes that are aligned with the needs, goals, and interests of those whom they lead, recognizing the very critical and essential role of followers in co-creating the conditions whereby social influence is made possible.

CHAPTER 2

AN OVERVIEW OF FOUNDATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON LEADERSHIP

The concepts of resonance, activation, and cultivation build upon and connect the body of leadership theory that has been offered by a range of authors across many academic disciplines. These existing theories can be organized and synthesized in numerous ways, including a scheme that we have found useful and that will be summarized in this chapter which focuses specifically on classical theories, contemporary theories, competency theories, and communication theories (Gigliotti, Ruben, & Goldthwaite, 2017; Ruben, De Lisi, & Gigliotti, 2017). Within this synthesis of popular leadership theories, the idea of social influence is positioned centrally in our understanding o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Chapter 1 An Introduction to Leadership, Communication, and Social Influence
• Chapter 2 An Overview of Foundational Perspectives on Leadership
• Chapter 3 An Overview of Foundational Perspectives on Communication
• Chapter 4 An Integrated View of Leadership and Communication: The Dynamics of Resonance, Activation, and Cultivation
• Chapter 5 The Role of Resonance, Activation, and Cultivation in Leading Change and Transformation
• Chapter 6 Implications and Applications for Those Who Aspire to Influence
• Chapter 7 The Decision to Lead; the Choice to Follow
• References
• Index